Walking into the Bastrop Municipal Center on Friday was like stepping back in time – via the laughter and memories of old friends, extending back over 70 years ago.

Vicki Adams

Walking into the Bastrop Municipal Center on Friday was like stepping back in time – via the laughter and memories of old friends, extending back over 70 years ago.

Alumni from Morehouse Parish Training School and Morehouse High School 1943–1969 reunited for their bi-annual reunion. This year's theme was “A Past to Cherish. A History to Preserve.”

Thomas O. Milton, class of 1951, made the trip from Carson, Calif., to visit family and friends at the reunion. He remembered the extra-curricular activities he loved to participate in during his time at MPTS.

“I enjoyed all the plays. I acted in most of them,” Milton said. “I played basketball too.”

Milton, now 80 years old, said he makes the trip to Bastrop every two years, not only to see his friends, but also his family. Milton's mother, Jureitta Fort, 102, and oldest daughter, Elaine Bradford, were at the reunion.

“I use to come back every year. Now I come back every two years,” he said. “This is like a family reunion. Everyone here is just like family.”

The Morehouse School Reunion was first organized on October 13, 1977 by Freeman Woods. Woods came up with the idea for the reunion, after having been a guest at a school reunion in Texas.

A letter from Woods was printed in this year's tenth annual reunion yearbook. In the letter, Woods explained how his idea “took wings.”

“The vast majority [of local friends] agreed that someone else, whose name I have since forgotten, had tried to do the same thing; but it did not work out,” he wrote. "This time, I was going to make it work.”